I was lucky enough to win something that wasn’t the premium bonds – Chris Marshall’s “comment of the month” competition!
Now Chris is not just an all round nice chap, he’s also the second (or eighth, depends how you work it out!) most popular chap in Spain according to Twitter.com. He moved to Almerimar quite a few years ago now with his all round decent egg wife Sands (who spends her spare time neutering cats). Chris is one of the writers, and Almerimar special reporter, at The Reader, Almería´s newest and best newspaper.
Each month, together with his network of friends in Almerimar, he gives away a couple of meals in local restaurants. I won it for a drunken tossaway comment which you can read here; Chris claims it was the funniest comment of the month, I contend that it was just that his blog doesn’t get as many comments as mine, so he has to take what he is given. 🙂
So up I roll, together with the GF (to whom I pretended this was a romantic day out instead of a freebie). We met up with Chris and Sands at Mac Gowen’s, the only place in Almerimar to do a decent pint of Guinness and a curry. It’s run by Paul, a genial Irishman who has a sister who lives up in Bédar.
Here’s a picture that was taken:
(One is me, one is Paul – but I’m not going to say who is who! The newspaper is the first issue of The Reader.)
I had a fantastic hamburger, which was the special that day. It’s been a long time since I had a hamburger that good. It’s not something I would normally have, but Paul was so insistant I try it that I did and I’m glad I did. The GF had the chicken with mushroom sauce and veg, and she too (another fussy eater) cleaned the plate. The curry there is damned good and Paul is right to be proud of it. He doesn’t do a lot of curry, but he cooks up the occasional dish that goes down right.
We also sampled some tapas there, and a couple (ah-hem) of glasses of wine. Chris had warned me that he was off the booze for a couple of days, but we soon changed his mind.
Now, I’ve been down to Almerimar to see Chris before, and sadly I’ve never written about it because it’s been a bit hazy the next day. It’s a lovely place in the middle of a sh**-**le (El Ejido). Good restaurants, good bars, lovely people and a wonderful marina. It’s worth a trip – check out almerimarlife.com before you go.
Oh, and here’s the writeup Chris did (link).
Ha ha you ate letting this editor thing go to your head ….. never let the facts get in the way of a good story eh 🙂
Before someone goes shouting about Twitter, the measure is Followers which doesn’t necessarily mean popularity of course, and the number one slot is Span is quite rightly taken by one of the founders of Twitter with something like 320,000 Followers! I tend to be in the Top 5 pretty consistently and am close to 10,000 followers at the moment. If you are on Twitter and want to engage then my user is MyAppleStuff.
As for the ‘funniest’ comment bit, there goes our wise cracking Editor again eh. In the month he won the FREE meal I had 320 comments on the blog, and his genuinely was the funniest …. he is doing himself a disservice if he says it wasn’t 🙂
The other facts he did get right though: Mac Gowan’s do a great Burger amongst other things, and their Fish & Chips are pretty good. The wine always flows when I meet up with David, but then again the JackD usually pops up at some stage as well!!! Almerimar is a lovely place and we always enjoy seeing David here, although the attendance of the GF was most welcome and certainly cut down on the drinking 🙂
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It’s easy, the man on the left, holding the newspaper, does not look Irish at all. But then, the man on the right looks as if he might be Diego MacGowan or perhaps Paco MacGowan
I’m 1/8th Irish, I’ll have you know! 😀